Notes
Location
Edmonton, Alberta
Key recommendations
Community partners to collaborate in order to “create the networks and pathways that lead to substantive labour market success for the majority of newcomers; Increase in social, business, and employment networking opportunities for immigrants; more support for immigrants on-the-job language and occupational skills development, including intercultural or transcultural skill development for established worker and newcomers alike; “language and occupational training opportunities need to be more immediately linked to employers”
Key populations
Adult immigrants and refugee clients of the Language Assessment, Referral, and Counselling Centre (LARCC)
Key findings
This paper sheds light on the English language proficiency, socio-demographic profiles, as well as goals and plans of immigrants and refugee clients of the Language Assessment, Referral, and Counselling Centre (LARCC) in Edmonton, Alberta. Some of the main findings illustrate that the majority of LARCC clinets are aged between 225 and 44 years, from diverse national and linguistic backgrounds. The first priority of immigrants is to improve their English language competency. The second priority is to pursue skill and career training, which indicates that they plan to improve their English before integrating in Canadian labour market. The data also show that most newcomers are employed in sales, cleaning, labour, or entry level work. This is despite the fact that many newcomers worked in specialized fields in their home countries. Their aspirations to work in similiar fields are, however, disrupted in Canada due to a combination of both individual and structural-level factors.
Gaps identified
“Current language training programming is set up to address language skills before occupational skills, and there is certainly some merit to this system. Paradoxically, however, clients also report finding themselves isolated in the comfortable bubble of a language class for too many months, to the detriment of their professional skills and networking opportunities.”
Community organizations
Immigration and Settlement Service at Catholic Social Services (CSS)
Integration timeline
At what point during the integration process the study was conducted?
NA
Publisher: Canadian Ethnic Studies Association
